The Future of Information Work: Computers and Internet

Open Source Community Worries About SaaS

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:01:00 GMT

Serdar Yagulalp, writing in InformationWeek (read it here) is worried about open source code being used in services without the service providing giving back to the community. I find this fascinating in that the model for open source is built around altruism and trust - which is not universal. When things are in the public domain, regardless of their licensing model, they will get used. The edges of agreements will be tested and models will change. The open source community is coming up against a moment of change, that will either drive innovation or it will drive a retrenchment. If information wants to be free, as many in the open source community believe, then people will use that software. And the kind of altruistic competition seen in this article is naive. The suggestion that the open source community quickly compete, duplicate and drive those who don't give back out of competitive advantage. If services are good, and they get picked up, they will thrive, and most users won't worry about how the code was developed. They will only worry that the service is accurate, safe and reliable.

Rather than get defensive, it is time for the open source community to look at themselves and innovate. They protectionism that thwarts innovation in manufacturing, also thwarts innovation in software. The open source community can't afford to be derisive on this issue. They will need to evolve their model in a way that services the needs of their community - those who contribute and those who don't.

Why the Web Will Be Ad Free Someday

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:35:46 GMT

Television is almost ad free now. Think about it. For those who have on-demand, the shows they watch are largely free of advertising - and if you run across an ad, you just fast forward through it.

How will this manifest itself on the web: people will pay for what they want. Yes, I said it, kind of a return to the days of Compuspend and AOL. The advertising revenue looks appealing, until you start hearing that you are driving off your audience. A recent BusinessWeek article, Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up (read it here) reports that growth rates on social networking sites has slowed, and that some big ones are loosing active members - just as advertising investments increase.

If you do some research, and I have, because I am associated with an organization that just funded this kind of research - nobody knows the real business value of social networking. Not as a home for advertising or building marketing communities, and not the role it plays inside organizations where connected netizens seek out advice or solace from friends and colleagues on the net. What has been true is people come for the people, regardless of an articulated value, and when that stops being the reason for the site, the traffic slows.

At some point people will be willing to spend to avoid advertising, and those who won't or can't spend more on subscription sites will find alternatives. Adblockplus.org and other ad blockers promises to help make ads go away. I haven't tried any of them - I just ignore ads mostly, on the web or on television - unless they are really creative in an artistic way - or really funny. I try not to buy things because I see or read advertisements, but every once in awhile, they do educate, and after a bit more homework, one or two may convince me to act. But if ads in my life disappear, I won't miss them at all. I have enough stuff and enough stimulation that a calm Internet experience that just delivers the value I need at the moment will be fine by me.

Are Widgets the Next Small Things as BusinessWeek Declares?

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:15:03 GMT

Yes and no. Yes because people like little things they can master. And they like to share them. Widgets will be kind of like the Pez Dispensers of the Internet.

Will they rock your world view? No. People will grow tired of them soon enough when they keep doing the same thing, day in and day out right there in your peripheral view. Could some become important? Probably not as widgets. If a widget becomes important it will become an application or part of a framework or OS.

Too bad computer programming has been taken away from common folk. If widgets were programmed like HyperTalk, then they might be even more interesting. But as the industry bemoans the loss of talent, it hasn't done the engineering to make application development easier for non-developers.

If somebody does a widget tool kit that makes widgets easy to code, and not just little trinkets to collect and discard, they may at least have some lasting affection like HyperCard does for those of us who did cool things with it, at a level of abstraction that came close to the way we think.

When a widget finds what I am looking forward before I ask for it, I will be impressed. Until then, I'll see if anyone has coded another cool clock or the ultimate RSS feed display. Sound boring just talking about it.

My hats off to Nathan Heleine for this wicked widget wonderland that proves my point.

Next Generation Search: Perhaps But Not Right Yet

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:16:12 GMT

The Economist examines a trend toward topic-specific search engines this week in "Know Your Subject." I believe that search focused on topics is a good start, but it ultimately means two things: somebody is making a choice about what to index, and somebody is making a choice about how to describe a topic.

If you trust your sources, then for the near term, this may be a good thing - but read on to the bullets for another take.

When all is said and done, I think we will end up with a meta-search strategy, at least for people who really care about their search results (my sense is many people care at a superficial level but they don't really care at a life-or-death level about most of their searches - love and health perhaps exclusive of this observation).

A meta-search strategy would combine:

General search - this way if something new pops on that the taxonomists haven't captured yet, you may still find it. Over time, general search may be complemented by contextual search.
Contextual search - this is search based on personal profiles. I think about this as the world's largest Venn diagram. Index everything that is known about you: calendar, workspaces, blogs, wikis, e-mail, crawls of favorites, local documents, etc. - locally and securely, and use that to inform searches. Let information start finding you based on patterns recognized within the rich digital representation of your interests, in the context of what you are actually doing or working on.
Topic specific searches - If you trust the source, include it. Realize that it will include a bias. It may well reflect your own bias, or give you insight into the biases of others. Imagine the field day in politics when parties start using their own "topic specific" legislative search engines against each other. The taxonomists would be incapable of weeding out ideology because of the strong influence of their constituency to return "meaningful results" about their subjects - here meaningful means data that reinforces the ideology and casts alternatives in a dark light.

I have said for years that a single mega-meta search engine is not what is needed, and the fickle nature of webizens will eventually drive any single source under because the bigger it becomes, the less trustworthy (just read recent rhetoric about Google's emergence as the dark lord of the Net).

In many cases, the problem is we don't know what we are looking for. For researchers or consumers or marketers or scientists, the questions may be clearer but how to pose them and what sources are being drawn upon still leaves questions. For others, the initial trawl is OK. Scrolling through a few pages of relatively relevant links or images will get close enough to satisfy whatever itch caused you to probe below the epidermis of the Net. "If you don't know where you are going, all roads will take you there." (BTW, it took ten minutes to search and source this quote - now the question is, do I trust the reference?). As we learn from quantum mechanics though, multiple paths may be needed to get us someplace. With a wealth of views in the world, why trust your search to one approach. If you really want something, to surround it, to corral it, you won't rely on just a digital dog or just a digital fence or just a digital ranch hand - you will want them working together to bring the most relevant bits to the center of you information universe.

And now for the metaphor search engine, which I clearly need...

The Best Way to Learn about the Future

Mon, 20 Jun 2005 09:51:14 GMT

One of the best way to understand the future is to work intensely with those who will be the first to step into it. This week Microsoft is sponsoring its second Information Worker Board of the Future with 12 students, age 17-25, from 10 countries. This is a way to help Microsoft understand the perceptions of the next generation of information workers by having them share their perceptions, biases and expectations for what they expect in the workplace, and how the expect they will influence the workplace through their careers.

Information on the IW Board of the Future can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/iwboard/default.mspx